How About Those BEARS?

 Cal beat UCLA!  It was a miracle!

We hied ourselves up the hill on Saturday night to get a look at the the newly-renovated Memorial Stadium and to watch what we thought was going to be a rout.  (Which it was, but not the way we expected.) 

Claudia was with us--we gave her a ticket for her birthday--and she was optimistic all the way about a Cal win, even though Cal's lost four games this season, and UCLA had lost only one.

So there we were, three semi-ancient alums perched on the new (cold) metal benches in Section K, with a good view of the field.  The scoreboards are fancy video screens, the bathrooms on the west side of the stadium are re-built, and a  new outsized press box/stadium club perches in the west rim.  Very fancy.  Also, there's a new field-level ring of corporate sponsor ads, some of which change color and background.  Distracting, but there you are; it was an expensive renovation ($474 million, including the new Student-Athlete High Performance Center).

View of the new press box/stadium clubs from outside the stadium

...and from the inside.

New 50-yard line seats, most cush-ily upholstered in gold, are available if you buy the seat for 40-50 years, for thousands dollars, through the  new Endowment Seating Program. Very un-Berkeley, in my view, but then my view is that of a 1970's-era alum,  when ROTC and military hotshots would not have a high profile at a football game.  Lots of them were present for "re-dedication" of the Stadium at half-time.   We learned that the stadium was built as a memorial to Californians killed in World War I, so I guess it made sense.

Cal takes to the field

 

 

 

 

The reverse of a card-trick card.  One was taped at  every seat in the stadium; ours were yellow.

 

Cal prevailed, despite Jerry's intermittent doom-ful predictions ("That's it, Cal's lost momentum").  One touchdown: miraculous.  Then two, three, four, all the way to 43-17.  The cold didn't matter.  The blanket I stretched over our laps fell off every time we jumped up to cheer another touchdown. It was a rah-rah,  Bruins-be-damned kind of night.

It was after 10 pm when the Bears nailed it shut, and we walked the length of campus to our car, bouyed and disbelieving.



Lyrics to the Fight Song: "Our Sturdy Golden Bear..." 

Tomorrow: A look at the Endowment Seats, stadium clubs, and High Performance Center during a stadium open house on Sunday.